Global Information Communication and Technology giant, Huawei Enterprise, envisions a world where every person, home and organisation has access to digital: one that is fully connected and integrated. During the Huawei Connect Education Summit South Africa, teachers and other stakeholders in the education sector listened attentively as Huawei specialists explored how they can use Artificial Intelligence, the Huawei Cloud and 5G to drive digital transformation in preparation for the fourth industrial revolution. While the Covid-19 pandemic had painful outcomes, all that time at home spurred many innovative thinkers into action. As a result, studies show that digital transformation has sped up by at least five years!
Through Smart Education and the Idea Hub, Huawei wants to bring that innovation into South African classrooms. During a demonstration of the Idea Hub capabilities, attendees saw how the Hub can provide the teacher with analytics of the class, including how many students pitched and participated, making it easier for the teacher to grade the students. It also has interactive features like polls where students can answer questions, a random selection feature to ensure fairness when answering questions and a feature that allows teachers to use different media like YouTube in the classroom.
Through Artificial intelligence, the Idea Hub has a mood sensing feature that allows teachers to see when a learner is disinterested or confused, allowing them to adjust their teaching to cater for them. This amazing product not only supports teaching but testing too. Students can write exams while connected to the system and the anti-cheating mechanism will look out for indicators such as talking, getting help from another, and focusing their eyes on the same point, which could indicate that there are notes there. To prevent collaboration during exams, the system allocates questions randomly, which ensures that no two students write the same exam.
During his speech, Executive Industry Solutions Manager at Huawei, Christo Abrahams, highlighted the need to move education to the centre of economic development. “Without skills, without development and learning, there is no future for any society around the world,” he said. Huawei fully believes this, that’s why they have invested 10% of their annual revenue — amounting to $15-billion — into research and development globally, to ensure that there is constant research into more innovative ways to dive into digital.
In South Africa, Huawei has spent over R7-million on bursaries for ICT students in the top five universities. They have also ensured that there are many qualified professionals who can maintain and improve the infrastructure and solutions, by training over 6 000 students from 20 universities. Huawei is fully committed to assisting South Africa on its journey to digital transformation by ensuring our learners have access to 5G internet. Through their Tech4All programme, Huawei has connected over 100 primary schools and 100 computer centres to the internet.
We are excited to see how these learners will use their skills and access to help South Africa dive even deeper into digital in the future. — Sphumelele Ndlovu
To learn more, visit: https://e.huawei.com/za/solutions/industries/education